Whistler at the Tate Britain

Sunday June 7 was a cloudy day with a high of 18C.  No rain!  Allan went out on a mission to find a new suitcase to replace the broken one.  Luckily there was a small luggage store about a 10 minute walk away.  He came back with a new carry-on, so we're good to go.

We had tickets to see the James McNeill Whistler exhibition at the Tate Britain.   We hadn't been to that Museum in a while.  Luckily, it was fairly straightforward to get there on the Tube. 

[As an aside, we are finding the Citymapper app very helpful. Our hosts say it's even better than the Transport for London (TfL) app, which we had also downloaded.  Citymapper is good for about 80 cities worldwide -the focus is on urban areas]

Outside the Tate Britain

Poster for the exhibit

The Tate Britain retrospective is the first major European exhibition of Whistler's work in 30 years, and it brings together the artist's world-famous paintings alongside rarely, or never seen works.  It includes portraits, drawings, prints and designs as well as a number of self-portraits. 

Whistler (1834-1903) was born in Massachusetts to a family of soldiers, doctors and engineers.  He grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his father oversaw Russia's first railway for Tsar Nicholas I.  At 14, after trips to England and Europe, he asked permission to train as a professional artist.  His family shared a commitment to work and a love of making art and music together.   After his father died suddenly, the family returned to the United States.  Whistler enrolled at West Point and drawing was the only subject in which he excelled.  He was expelled for poor performance and rule-breaking.  Drawing was a refuge and by 20, he had produced nearly 200 studies, mostly on pocket-sized sheets.  He lived by the motto 'no day without a line'.

Whistler worked across four continents. His career in Paris and London and his 'fiery relationship with the art world' brought him international fame.  Whistler depicted modern life alongside a generation of avant-garde artists.  He explored colour and pattern for their own sake influenced by East Asian art.  His spare style redefined painting as a visual equivalent to music.   He took the position that "Nature is very rarely right", believing that true artists must transform what they see.  His steps towards abstraction challenged his contemporaries and 'foretold the future of modern art.'

There was an introductory painting in the first room of the exhibit which also had a number of artefacts from his studio, including a number of Japanese ceramics.   In the painting below, Whistler painted himself looking out from his studio.  The artist Joanna Hiffernan (and his lover for four years) and professional model Emelie Jones relax in Japanese robes.  A display of blue and white ceramics behind them signals Whistler's interest in East Asian art.

The Artist in his Studio, 1865-6.  

Whistler reinvented the traditional full-length portrait through a series of studio experiments.  His subsequent partner Maud Franklin, an artist and model, posed for 12 paintings.  In the painting below, she represents Effie Deans, a heroine in a Walter Scott novel.  

Arrangement in Yellow and Gray: Effie Deans, c. 1876-8.

It was also noted that Whistler created a 'mark' to sign his work, like a Chinese or Japanese designer of ceramics.  He turned his initials J and W into a butterfly.  As Whistler fought for his ideas of art, he turned the tail into a sting.   A number of paintings and frames had clear butterfly marks.

La Mère Gérard, c. 1858-9.

Whistler found early success in printmaking, focusing on ordinary views of city life.

Bibi Lalouette, 1859.   Whistler often dined at the Lalouettes family restaurant.  The Lalouettes prized this image.  He would later use a similar pose in the well known portrait of his mother.

There was a copy of his St. Petersburg Sketchbook from 1944-8.   

A page from the St. Petersburg Sketchbook

At 21, he inherited a modest legacy and set off to Europe.  He continued his artistic studies in Paris.  He threw himself into the unconventional world of Paris's Left Bank.  He stayed in run-down rented rooms, 'carousing in cafés and bars where debates about romanticism and realism raged'.  Whistler brought his love of 17th century painters-especially Rembrandt- to his investigations of everyday life.

Scene from Bohemian Life, 1855-7.  Here Whistler imagines a poor painter's cluttered Parisian attic.  The easel is pushed back for men and women to gather around the stove.

The Mustard Seller, 1858

The 'French Set' demonstrated Whistler's skill in capturing lighting on buildings and interiors.  Street at Severne (below) is his earliest known night scene.  The blue paper enhances the atmosphere.  Throughout his life, he experimented with different textures and colours of paper.

Street at Severne, 1858

Whistler with a Hat, 1859

At 23, Whistler had triumphed as a printmaker but had not yet made his name as a painter.  He now  embarked on a series of landscapes and interior scenes.  Whistler's generation moved away from the realism of Gustave Courbet's circle and broke new ground, drawn to urban subjects and natural, luminous colours.  They sketched quickly and painted with visible varied brushstrokes.  Later this style would become famous as 'impressionism'.

After four years in Paris, Whistler moved to London and the industrial River Thames.

The picture below, A White Note  depicts Joanna Hiffernan, artist and Whistler's lover from 1860-64)

A White Note, 1862--- It was another 12 years before 'impressionism' was recognised in France.  Whistler did not exhibit this painting until the first impressionist exhibition in London,
two decades after he painted it.

Wapping, 1860-4.  Depicts working people relaxing on the balcony of a disreputable pub near the docks of Rotherhithe.  The models were Whistler's included artists Joanna Hiffernan and Alphonse Legros.

Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, 1859-63  

Chelsea in Ice, 1864.  Whistler's circle began to look at landscapes through what they called an 'envelope' of light and atmosphere.  He was the first among them to paint London's famous smogs and mists.  Claude Monet soon followed.  Whistler had argued that nature was not always beautiful and that it was up to the artist to create beauty through colour and line.  This painting was an early step towards abstraction.

Miss May Alexander, 1874-75. She was 12 when Whistler painted her.  After many sittings, May became ill and the painting was left unfinished.

Arrangement in Gray: Portrait of the Painter, c. 1872.  
He adopts the pose of a Rembrandt self-portrait here.

Whistler's mother, Anna, arrived in London in 1863, escaping the American Civil War.  She replaced Joanna Hiffernan in her son's household and sometimes modelled for him.  Wearing mourning black more that 20 years after her husband's death, Anna seems to look backward in a world that looks forward.  She sits in the strikingly modern interior in Whistler's studio.  His painting style was also new.  Light stokes describe her face, hands and lace cap.

Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1 (Portrait of the Painter's Mother), 1871

Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander (sister of May).  Eight year old Cicely stood for this portrait 70 times.  The artist could be absorbed in his work for many hours.  Cicely was often exhausted after her sittings.

Weary, 1863.  Joanna HIffernan, artist and model, lived with Whistler from 1860 to 1864.  
Whistler worked directly onto a copper plate in this etching.

Whistler and his circle were avid collectors of imported ceramics, textiles and woodblock prints from China, Japan and other countries.  East Asian culture encouraged Whistler to blur distinctions between art and design.  

Harmony in Flesh Colour and Red, 1869.  The figures recall Japanese prints by Torii Kiyonga.  Their flowing gowns are associated with the 'artistic dress' movement against rigid Victorian fashions.

Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, 1864.  Whistler paints Joanna Hiffernan leaning on the fireplace of their home in Chelsea, London.  Her fan is decorated with a Japanese woodcut print.  In the painting, Hiffernan displays a wedding ring, but she and Whistler never married.

There was a room in the exhibit called The Peacock Room.  Whistler's friendship with Frederick Leyland, the leading patron of modern art in England turned into a bitter quarrel.  The shipping magnate planned a renovation of his dining room to display Whistler's paintings alongside his collection of blue-and-white ceramics.  When the original architect fell ill, Leyland asked Whistler to make finishing touches to the room.  Without permission, Whistler transformed the entire space.  He filled it with peacock motifs.  He later added a mural of himself and Leyland as fighting peacocks.  The Peacock Room is Whistler's only surviving decorative interior.  It is on permanent view at the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. and has been recreated for this exhibition.

View of the recreated Peacock Room

Cartoon of Rich and Poor Peacocks, 1876.  The fighting peacocks symbolise the 'poor' artist and his 'rich' patron.  Leyland objected to Whistler's unauthorized redesign of his dining room and refused to pay the high fee.  Whistler then destroyed a painting commissioned for the room and replaced it with the mural.

A gallery contained a number of his pieces- Nocturnes.  They were some of my favourites.  Whistler was fascinated by the asymmetry and flat colours in Japanese landscape prints.  He also liked the subdued hues of the sea at dusk he had encountered during a trip to Chile. He created a series of paintings of the Thames at night.  He called these 'nocturnes', borrowing a musical term to suggest atmosphere rather than a story.  He transformed the fog and pollution into timeless beauty.  He abandoned unblended impressionist brushwork and instead used long, ribbon-like strokes to evoke the moving river.   The leading art critic John Ruskin attacked Whistler in a harsh review.  Whistler sued, using the court case as a stage on which to defend his art.  He was successful.

Nocturne: Blue and Silver-Chelsea, 1871-- Whistler refined his idea that:' painting from nature...should be done at home.'  He observed the Thames at night and then recreated the memory in his studio.

Crepuscule in Pink and Green: Valparaiso, 1866

Whistler had the view that : 'Paint should not be applied thick,  it should be like breath on the surface of a pane of glass.'

At 45, Whistler was left bankrupt by legal battles and left London for Venice living on a commission to make 12 etchings of the city.  He stayed for 18 months and returned with 200 experimental etchings and pastels.  He used a number of different media in these works.  For the rest of his life, Whistler regularly roamed Britain and Europe working on small landscapes.  He chose his medium in response to each location.

The Palace: White and Pink, 1879-80 (Venice)

Snow, 1882.  This was painted in the warmth of an Amsterdam café, looking through a window.

The Steps, Amsterdam, 1889.  Whistler considered his 'Amsterdam Set' his highest achievement in etching.  He made intricate compositions of the city's architecture reflected in the canals.

Drury Lane Rags, 1888.  In his 60s, Whistler returned to lithographic prints.

Whistler married Beatrix Godwin (née Birnie Philip) (1857-1896),  a designer and close friend.  She had designed a cabinet for him in 1875-80.  She exhibited her furniture under the name of 'Rix Birnie' to avoid gendered prejudice. Maud Franklin had been Whistler's main model since the 1870s and became his mistress.  She called herself  'Mrs. Whistler', but he showed no intention of marrying Maud.  Through his friendship with Edwin Goodwin, Whistler became close to Beatrix.  In 1885, Beatrix separated from Goodwin due to his philandering, and he died in 1886.  

Whistler and Beatrix married after her husband's death in 1888.  No publicity was given to the ceremony to avoid the possibility that Maud Franklin would interpret the marriage ceremony.   Whistler and Beatrix had a happy marriage that lasted only eight years.  Soon after they moved to Paris in 1892, Beatrix was diagnosed with cancer and died two years later, aged 38.  A series of rare lithographic portraits date from their last days together in London where she was seeking treatment.  They had taken rooms in the Savoy Hotel, overlooking the Thames in February 1896 and she died in May.

The Siesta, 1896.

Marine: Blue and Grey, 1884-85.  Whistler was drawn to coasts throughout his career.  This painting was done at St. Ives, Cornwall.  [As an aside, this is the location of the works we saw at the Eames Gallery, by a number of artists who painted or had links to St. Ives]

Whistler returned to society portraiture during the last 20 years of his life.  He spent years reworking some paintings, even after they had been signed, sold and exhibited.  By  the end of the century, his enigmatic, tonal paintings were in demand.

The Chelsea Girl, 1884.  Whistler treats this young street vendor with the same confidence and scale as the aristocrats and celebrities who commissioned his portraits.

Red and Black: The Fan (Edith Birnie Philip), 1891-6.  This Spanish-inspired portrait is of his sister-in-law.

The Jade Necklace, 1896-1900.  Rosalind Birnie Philip, another sister in law, was the executor of Whistler's estate after his death.

Gold and Brown: Self-Portrait, 1896-8.  This painting refers to Rembrandt.  Whistler sold it to American millionaire George W. Vanderbilt.  According to Rosalind Birnie Philip, this was the image he 'wanted to be remembered by'.

It was a very comprehensive exhibit.  We were both impressed by the scope of Whistler's work and the many media he was proficient in.  His landscapes and coastal scenes were superb and we also liked his etchings and portraits.  He was much more outspoken than we had known.  The exhibit even had a video of an actor reading Whistler's defence of his artwork from his lawsuit against John Raskin.   He was a very innovative and forward looking artist.

As we left the exhibit, we noticed a striking mural on the walls of a stairway leading to the next floor.  It was a spectacular painting by Chris Ofili entitled Requiem, 2023.  It pays tribute to a young artist, Khadija Saye (1992-2017), who lost her life in the Grenfell Tower tragedy of 2017.  Other images associated with the fire also appear in the work.

The work was commissioned by the Tate.  Ofili had met Khadija Saye in May 2017, when they were both exhibiting in Venice.  One month later, Saye died in the Grenfell Tower fire.  Ofili said that "he hoped that the mural will continue to speak across time to our collective sadness."

Requiem, 2023.

Other views 

We left the Tate Britain and took the Tube to Old Street station in Shoreditch.  We stopped at Ozone coffee
just before it was closing at 4:00 p.m. and had a quick coffee.  Unfortunately, the kitchen had closed for the day.

Ozone coffee beans

We wandered to Spitalfields Market and some cool shops nearby.  A new store, Ludo Pals, had wonderful knits, but the prices were out of sight.

Spitalfields market- food and clothes.

We also stopped at Goodhood- a concept store with local designers, housewares,
linens, shoes and jewellery.

We then walked up Brick Lane to Benthal Green.

Brick Lane Bookshop had a great selection.  Guy with typewriter sitting outside.

Graffiti on Brick Lane

We stopped at Beigel Bakery and picked up a smoked herring and a salt beef and pickle, on beigels.  We ate the herring sandwich right away and saved the salt beef for the following day.

After some more wandering, we decided to have an early dinner at Bao, across from Smoking Goat where we had dinner our first night in London.

Outside of restaurant

It was a lovely surprise- the flavours were fantastic.  We shared Soy Glazed Aubergine, Crispy Tempura; Taiwanese Fried Chicken with hot sauce; and Mushroom Dumplings, Soy Cow Choi.

Aubergine dish

Great fried chicken- crisp, flavourful and not greasy at all

Fabulous dumplings in a great sauce.  
Night Night for Allan who had enough photos taken of him for the day!

We headed back to our place.  Another great day in London.